21 February 2012 10:35 AM

The Coalition is refusing to publish a report into the risks of NHS Reform. What have they got to hide?

IF I was David Cameron I'd be looking for an exit strategy by now. It must be awful to be him, backed into a corner of someone else's making and ridiculed and undermined from Sussex to Scunthorpe - as he currently is - over the Health and Social Care Bill. Or as it's more popularly (if inaccurately) known, 'the NHS Reforms'.

Mr. Cameron has found himself in an uncomfortable and untenable spot. This is what happens when you are determined to force through goals that the vast majority of people, professionally and personally, oppose. And not without good reason.

To be fair, the current blueprint for changes within the NHS aren't actually Cameron's plans at all but were first mooted when his political grandmother, Margaret Thatcher, was in power.

They were subsequently licked into shape by Tony Blair's champagne-socialist cabinet - shame, shame on him - but not implemented. Nonetheless, Cameron's determination to push them through to their full and detrimental technicolour conclusion should not be underestimated.

The reformation of the NHS has been controversial from day one for the simple fact that when you strip away all the hyperbole and management-speak it amounts to one simple thing: a privatisation of the NHS.

Yet despite clear evidence of this - with some 49 per cent of beds intended for private use - Health Secretary Andrew Lansley constantly refuses to put such a tag on it. Presumably he works on the principal that if you repeat something enough, no matter how daft it sounds to everyone else, then you will come to believe it.

If there's one thing we know for certain about Conservative behaviour, it is how they love to flog the family silver. It's their thing. Not for nothing are they known as the eBay of politics (well, in our house anyway).

Problem is, when they are done with their pillaging of our national stock, it can take decades before we even begin to grasp the full significance of their privatisation propensity.

We are still struggling with the fall-out from Margaret Thatcher's 'Right to Buy' social housing scheme as not one successive Government has adequately filled the gaping hole of affordable housing left by this act, despite their assurances to the contrary.

A similar troubling scenario is likely to occur with the NHS in terms of access to care, although Andrew Lansley continues to bury his head in the proverbial sand despite the pleading of health professionals and members of the public asking him to re-consider.

So it is that the latest chapter in NHS Reforms reaches Parliament tomorrow (Wednesday). This is crunch time in these measures because MPs will vote on whether to demand the publication of a secret government report into the risks facing the NHS should the changes go through.

How bizarre that a vote would be required for such a crucial document. Am I alone in wondering how anyone could justify such a move? I don't know how Cameron and Lansley can keep straight faces on that one.It is clear to me that we should absolutely know the full risks of such major legislative change. Unless, of course, it was felt that the information contained therein might be detrimental to achieving the gruesome aims.

So it is that Andrew Lansley, like Cameron, has found himself in something of a political hole - and his increasingly careworn face suggests that he knows this.

Desperate for MPs and Lords to back his plans while, at the same time, refusing to let them find out what the risks of those plans are, you have to ask yourself this: what has he got to hide?

Rewind to the start of this week and, desperate to win final necessary support prior to the vote, Lansley hosted a round table summit at Downing Street.

You may know about this because of the media images that have surfaced, primarily that of him approaching the conference building when he was confronted by a clearly irate, and rightfully so in my opinion, pensioner, June Hautot who gives him what for concerning the betrayal.

Interestingly, a number of major health bodies, who have been vocal in their criticisms of the reforms, were not invited to attend the summit. These included The British Medical Association (BMA) and the Royal College of Nurses.

A statement released from BMA described their exclusion as 'odd', while The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP), another opponent of the Bill, described their non-invitation as "extremely concerning".

During an interview with BBC's Radio 4's Today programme on Monday, Peter Carter of RCN said: "We really don't think it's a sensible way forward to think that you can have a meeting which has been called an emergency summit to take things forward without involving many of the key organisations that are intrinsic to making sure the NHS is successful."

And he's not alone. Some 650 leading health professionals - including doctors and consultants - have signed a letter stating that the summit was just about gathering together 'Yes people'.

I agree. It was, clearly. That's form for this Coalition.

If we have learned anything about David Cameron's style of governance it is this: if he doesn't like the advice he has been offered then he will simply ignore it - as he did with the whole raft of opponents to his Welfare Reform Bill.

So it is that he is less-than-impressed with his health adversaries and has clearly decided to exclude those with the temerity to say no to him from a final say in how it pans out.

Details of the meeting appear to be something of a closely guarded secret, although political observers have noted that the Government felt the time for amending and altering the health bill was long past and there was little point in continuing to seek support from the health groups firmly against the charges.

It was this widespread exclusion of health experts that prompted Labour leader Ed Miliband to say: "This bunker mentality is the wrong way to run the NHS."

While I have, generally, found Ed Miliband to be a bit of a non-starter when it comes to challenging the considerably more wiley David Cameron, I have to agree with him on this one.

It is the sensible thing, surely, to seek as wide a range of opinions and input as possible - and none more so than when you are intending to change the face of a national and much loved institution such as the NHS.

Well, yes, that would certainly be the case if we were continuing to fool ourselves that this is a democracy. Recent actions from our Coalition leader - whether that's him wanting to censor social media or overturning Lords' voting by invoking archaic laws - would tell us this is anything but.

So, given that Lansley is refusing to reveal what the risks are, presumably as identified from their extremely expensive consultants, it is left to the general public and interested bodies to gauge what future troubles may lie ahead for us within our National Health Service.

Undoubtedly, a primary concern is the issue of patient safety and the fear that as more of the NHS is opened up to private sources, our healthcare system will become something of a postcode lottery - even more so than it is now.

For many of those vociferiously opposing the Bill, it is apparent that we are headed towards an American-style care system whereby those who can afford it get treatment and those who can't are frequently left to their own devices.

Even a brief look to how our stateside cousins run their health affairs tell us that they are notoriously bureaucratic, wasteful and inefficient and patient care, at best, is frequently discriminatory.

Not for a second am I suggesting that we leave the NHS as it stands. There are numerous troubling issues to address in terms of how it is funded and how it is run.

There are problems with health tourism, certainly, and that cannot continue unabated. There are also issues with deciding what is and isn't priority care. Should someone who is alcoholic/obese/a mountain climber be considered as much of a priority for treatment as someone with, say, Multiple Sclerosis or kidney disease?

And what about the astonishing salaries that doctors and trust officials receive in sharp and bitter contrast to those on the frontline including nurses and other care staff? That certainly has to be tackled.

That said, the current proposals for the NHS are a disaster waiting to happen. One reason, certainly, why so many learned people oppose it and why an e-petition calling for the Bill to be dropped has gained nearly 200,000 signatures including those of Stephen Fry and footballer Rio Ferdinand.

There is little doubt that almost two million nurses, paramedics, physios, midwives, porters and cleaners, have been sidelined as these measures are debated in Parliament even though they will be among some of the first to suffer under new measures.

I fear, greatly, that the Health and Social Care Bill will be rubber-stamped by MPs - and not least because of the degree of financial interests that our Honorable Members (sometimes its hard to say that without laughing) have a stake in.

At the last count, 31 Lords and 18 MP's have extremely lucrative interests in the health industry - including health providers such as BUPA, pharmaceuticals and consultancies.

It doesn't require great intellectual insight to see how their voting may be swayed by their personal priorities and how reforms, as set out, will directly benefit them.

I appreciate that it is entirely legal for our elected - and unelected - members to have financial investments aside from their roles as MPs, and as long as they list these in the parliamentary register then everything remains above board.

But come on: Legal it may be - in a system of rules that they created - but that does not always equate to moral. And certainly not on this occasion.

So I can only hope that tomorrow when our MPs come to vote they remember that they are answerable to us, the extremely concerned general public.

And while they currently have the opportunity to vote on conditions that will affect our lives far into the future, they should not forget that come the next election, so do we.

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SONIA POULTON

Sonia Poulton is a journalist, broadcaster and mum. She is fascinated by human interest, social issues, psychological matter and cultural phenomena.
As a former music journalist she media tutored and named The Spice Girls and she recently completed a Psychology degree ("because I wanted to understand myself more"). Sonia is a amateur astrologer who enjoys being thrashed at squash by her teen daughter, dancing to pop videos, helping a local wildlife rescue centre and walking her West Highland Terrier, Bliss in the Cotswold countryside. Her long-lost brother and sister recently found her on Facebook. She deplores laziness, procrastination, bad manners, bigotry and PC-behaviour. She is inspired by human kindness.